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Though I often made fun of what you said, that was simply a way I had; and when I saw you did not mind, I continued in that way, hoping always to vex you; your good temper provoked me, because I knew that you made allowances for me being a Petershof invalid.
"So am I," said the other, lighting his cigar too. "Those are precisely my own feelings," remarked Mrs. Reffold. But she had learnt her lesson. WÄRLI, the little hunchback postman, a cheery soul, came whistling up the Kurhaus stairs, carrying with him that precious parcel of registered letters, which gave him the position of being the most important person in Petershof.
And then, too, judging from the way in which they managed to amuse themselves, they liked being in Petershof, though they never owned that to the invalids. On the contrary, it was the custom for the caretakers to depreciate the place, and to deplore the necessity which obliged them to continue there month after month.
And now when he was dead, and it probably mattered little to him where he was laid, it was some time before she could, make up her mind to leave him in the lonely little Petershof cemetery. "It will be so dreary for him there," she said to the Doctor. "Not so dreary as you made it for him here," thought the Doctor.
When she is not talking of her own looks, all she says is: 'Oh, if I had only not come to Petershof! or, 'Why did I ever leave that hospital in Manchester? or, 'The cold is eating into the very marrow of my bones. At first she used to read to me; but it was such a dismal performance that I could not bear to hear her. Why don't I send her home?
"I wanted not to think of myself," Bernardine, said. "Now that I have begun it, I shall enjoy going on with it. I hope it will be a companion to me." "I wonder whether you will make a failure or a success of it?" he remarked. "I wish I could have seen." "So you will," she said. "I shall finish it, and you will read it in Petershof." "I shall not be going back to Petershof," he said.
The French Marchioness had already been requested to leave three other hotels in Petershof; but it was not at all probable that the proprietors of the Kurhaus would have presumed to measure Madame's morality or immorality.
He might be seen any fine day trudging along in company with his photographic apparatus, and a desolate dog, who looked almost as cheerless as his chosen comrade. Neither the one took any notice of the other; Allitsen was no more genial to the dog than he was to the Kurhaus guests; the dog was no more demonstrative to Robert Allitsen than he was to any one in Petershof.
He had been getting gradually worse since he came to Petershof, but his brother, a bright sturdy young fellow, seemed quite unconscious of the seriousness of his condition. "And what am I to do?" he asked pathetically. "My brother does not even think I am ill. He says I am to rouse myself and come skating and tobogganing with him. Then I tell him that the Doctor says I must lie quietly in the sun.
She knew from the effort which those few words had cost her, how far removed she was from her old former self. "Good-bye, Mrs. Reffold," she said nervously. "Good-bye, Miss Holme," was the only answer. THE Doctors in Petershof always said that the caretakers of the invalids were a much greater anxiety than the invalids themselves.
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